Top

BHRC Human Rights Report on March- 2016
Total 202 persons killed in March, 2016

Human Rights Report:

The documentation section of Bangladesh Human Rights Commission (BHRC) furnished this human rights survey report on the basis of daily newspapers and information received from its district, subdistrict and municipal branches. As per survey it appears that 202 peoples were killed in March, 2016 in all over the country. It proves that the law and order situation is not satisfactory. Bangladesh Human Rights Commissions extremely anxious about this situation. In the month of March, 2016 average 6.51 people were killed in each day.
The Law enforcing agencies and related Govt. departments should be more responsible so that percentage of killing may be brought down to zero level. To institutionalize the democracy and to build human rights based society the rule of law and order must be established everywhere. Through enforcing rule of law only such violation against human rights can be minimized. It appears from documentation division of BHRC:
Total 202 person killed March, 2016
Political killing 10, Killing for dowry 8, killing by family violence 17, Killed due to social discrepancy 65, Killed by Law enforcing authority 5, Killed due to doctor negligence 3, Assassination 8, Mysterious death 72, Killed due to BSF 4, Women & Chilled killed due to rape 3, Kill due to abduction 6, Communal Violence 1.
Killed by several accidents:
Killed by road accident 222, Suicide 27
Besides victims of torture:
Rape 30, Torture for Dowry 11, Sexual Harassment 8.
 

Report: Russia Closing UN's Human Rights Office in Moscow

Human Rights Report:
Russia's diplomatic mission in Geneva reportedly has confirmed that the United Nations' human rights office in Moscow is being shut down - a development the UN's top rights official feared would happen.
A report on March 12 by Russia's RIA Novosti news agency said the Russian diplomatic mission in Geneva confirmed a decision was made to close the mission in Moscow of the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
There was no immediate comment from the OHCHR about the report, which comes in the midst of a growing crackdown in Russia against rights activists, independent journalists, and public debate. Russian ambassador Aleksei Borodavkin was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying the OHCHR has helped to create human rights institutions in Russia and "we do not see anything extraordinary" about the Moscow office being closed.
On March 10, UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein expressed concern about "signals received" from the Kremlin that Russia intended to close the OHCHR's Moscow office..
 

UN Secretary General Apologizing for using 'Occupation' in Reference to Annexed Area

Human Rights Report:

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he regrets a "misunderstanding" over his use of the word "occupation" to describe Israel's annexation of Jerusalem. The unfortunate comment has led to Israel expelling dozens of United Nations staff, Reuters reported.
Earlier this month Ban used the word "occupation" to describe Israel's annexation of Jerusalem in 1968, when it took over the holy city from its occupier, Jordan. "His use of the word was not planned, nor was it deliberate, it was a spontaneous, personal reaction. We regret the misunderstandings and consequences that this personal expression of solicitude provoked," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
Ban said the word during a visit to refugee camps in Judea and Samaria where Arabs who claim to own eastern Jerusalem reside. Israel then ordered the United Nations to pull out dozens of civilian staffers and close a military liaison office for the UN peacekeeping mission. It said its decision was irreversible.
"Nothing [Ban] said or did in the course of that trip was meant to offend or express hostility toward the Jewish State, which is a valued member of the United Nations," Dujarric said.
Israel has accused Ban of dropping the United Nations' neutral stance on the Jerusalem dispute.
"The position of the United Nations has not changed," Dujarric said. "He has not and will not take sides on the issue of Jerusalem."
Every single thing reported in this story is true - except that it wasn't Israel but Morocco who went ape-crazy when Ban dared call their annexation of Western Sahara an occupation. He did it during a visit to the refugee camps in southern Algeria for the Sahrawi people, who contend Western Sahara belongs to them.
Which offers a wonderful lesson in diplomacy: when a country believes in its rightful ownership of some territory, it must treat anyone who believes otherwise like dirt and throw a tantrum. It always gets results. But do most Israeli leaders truly believe Jerusalem belongs to Israel? Good question.
 

Repaying children's love and trust
 

Farid Hossain

At least Bangladesh is proving the British singer-song writer wrong. Children in Bangladesh are being killed and subjected to torture, bullying and beating. Among the suspects are sometimes family members and relatives. Consider last week's death of two siblings - twelve-year-old Nusrat Aman and six-year-old Alvee Aman - at the Rampura Banasree flat. Newspapers quoted family members as saying that the two died from food poisoning (finger has been pointed to the food the family bought from a local chinese restraurant and kept in the home fridge). But a visera report has given us a different version: the children may have been first strangulated to death before being given poison. There have been marks of torture on the bodies of the children. This find has led the police investigators to conclude that the children have been murdered, a contradiction of the version of poisoning as reportedly claimed by family members.
Police investigators have put the parents of the children in their list of suspects. The killings of the Banasree siblings have been the latest in the spate of child murders in the country. Dhaka's leading Bengali-language daily, Prothom Alo, reported in its March 2 issue that the past five years had seen the murders of 1134 children, a nerve-numbing figure. Even more shocking and tragic is the report that some of the children have been killed by close family members. A young man in Comilla reportedly told a court in Comilla last week that he had killed his two step brothers for no other motivation but his deep anger against his father for allegedly neglecting the youth's mother, the first wife of the man. The murders came even before the harrowing memories of the killings of Rajan (in Sylhet) and Rakib (in Khulna) could fade from the public mind. Speedy trials have punished the offenders with death sentences even though the legal process to execute the verdicts will be long.
The killings of children go on despite public outcry against the killers. The murders have also prompted the social thinkers and psychologists to reassess our social values and the relationships between children and the society. Stunning are the reports that in some cases parents are seen as suspects.
Why? A study into this question is not just for finding out the motives of the killings. It requires a deep analysis of our society and deteriorating social values that make adults - neighbours, employers, family members - to resort to such cruelty and acts of medieval barbarism.
The Why questions has by raised by a person none other land Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who has expressed concern over a spurt in the murder of children In comments at the parliament she said, "The tendency to murder children has increased. Why this murder? Why should a child be killed over a small family dispute?"
In condemning the despicable acts Hasina hoped the courts will give death penalty to those involved in the murders.
The child murders are baffling social thinkers and psychologists too. It seems the society is losing its core values to treat children (even those outside the families) with love and affection. Children should not be targets of torture and bullying just because they are innocent, weak and easy to be misled by sweet promises from the adults. Should the adults target them for rape, torture and murder just because they respect and trust the adults?
Law of the land should definitely be put to work in dealing with these mindless killings. Those responsible have to be brought to trial to receive the punishment they deserve. That's just a partial approach, not the comprehensive response to the rotten minds and their rotting values. The adults of the society should be able to repay the love and respect they get from the children. Or else we continue to sink..
 

Top
 

Women on top

Human Rights Report:

Let us start with an admission, that it can often be difficult for the menfolk of Bangladesh, as well as myriad other societies in the grip of patriarchy, to recognise some of the horrors endured by their womenfolk, in the course of going about their daily lives. In the most ordinary and seemingly benign settings, as routinely as night follows day, each and every hour that ticks away, women across the length and breadth of this country are faced with inordinate hardships that derive ultimately from the lopsided gender politics that has prevailed in this part of the world since time immemorial. In this era of accelerated globalisation and worldwide instant communication, the consensus around much of this being no more acceptable in 2016 has percolated through to this part of the world like a siren. Not that it offers any sort of consolation, but one thing we do know is that we are not alone in the fight to emancipate our women. It is remarkable how many of the problems plaguing women in Bangladesh are common to the region. And fighting them will require men in four countries - India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh - to face up to some tough questions.
To take just one, are we in Bangladesh up to the task of disturbing the equilibrium offered by the trusty "Ma-bon" parable? Despite the sentiment of enduring affection and protectiveness it is sheathed in, can we recognise how it is so reductive to women's possibilities, to their personhood and identity? Yet it is so comforting in its buttressing of the status quo, albeit one bathed in disgrace that is all too apparent, yet somehow hidden in plain view. When it is some particularly vile aspect, say for example the reprehensible "Two-finger test" that rape victims registering a complaint are subjected to as part of their immediate medical test. It is a shockingly insensitive and demeaning exercise that has been described as a "second rape" that the hapless victim must undergo, just for the case to be taken into cognisance by the Court. Is it any surprise then, that even after constitutional amendments were made to pave a path for political influence to be undermined in high-profile cases centring crimes against women and children, the vast majority of rape cases go unreported at the local police station? Most rape victims, almost all, suffer severely traumatic experiences that leave them extremely fragile mentally as well as physically, in its aftermath. It is almost incomprehensible that a doctor bound by the Hippocratic oath that guides his calling, in fulfilment of a policing requirement, would judge such a victim fit to undergo the ordeal masquerading as the "Two-finger test". And that too, all without any established link to medical science. Absolute travesty, no matter how you look at it. And so the sooner we as a nation manage to take this abhorrent practice off the books, the better will be our standing in the world.
But before we look to the world beyond our borders, can we gather the forbearance and nerve to look inside our own homes, and consider how even within the supposedly liberal households of the urban middle class in Bangladesh, our own mothers and sisters could have been deprived of fulfilling lives spent in a quest to discover their own latent potentials. We can hardly countenance such a proposition. Yet if we pause to think back, the seemingly small yet relentless incidents of discrimination even between siblings, stare back at us with their damning indictment. Who got the bigger piece at the dinner table? The brother, or the sister? Who got the opportunity to go abroad for higher studies? Who was it that helped the mother to clean up the dishes? The answers to these questions, for the average Bangladeshi household, will almost always uncover an instance of discrimination.

Top
 

.

.